Suffer for money and vocational success?

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What exactly forces you to be stressed by high responsibility jobs? And don't say just "responsibility" - the source of the problem is deeper. Maybe it is fear of making mistake or something like that?

Good question. It's not the responsibility itself that makes me stressed. A data input job which is low responsibility, but boring as mince, is easy because it is the same every day and not many unexpected things happen.

A higher responsibility position usually comes with the added stress of different things happening each day, new projects, new clients, new problems which require new solutions, new people to learn to communicate with. On the plus side it is interesting and makes me use my brain, but all that dealing with other people stresses me out more than just sitting at a computer punching in facts and figures. I also need to keep up with what is going on in my industry in my spare time, but I've been so burned out at work that I don't have the energy to learn new skills to keep up with my contemporaries and I feel like I can't compete in the job market, but I need to find a new job because my current one is not stable and could end anytime.

Mucho stressyness.

I see. In fact I have more or less same issue - as IT Manager I often have to deal with whole new people, find new soultions for new problems and so on. The worst thing in this is people themselves - I hate networking, small talks, trying to obtain smth from those who are not intrersted in it at all and so on. On the other hand, I hate straight IT job - that's boring to death.

To outflank this problem I began running startup in that field I love. This is new business so it needs significant amount of networking to succed. But I won't deal with most of required people! That will do one of my team members who has talent to find common ground with almost everybody. So as with other functions I don't like much - I found interested guys who like that areas of business and now they all are solid team under my command. So I have to deal just with things I love to do, with small team of supporters (and they can deal with new members in future as division bosses) and only sometimes with really critical events from different spheres I delegated to the team.

And I don't look like stereotypical charismatic leader with loud voice - I am rather shy person and speak quiet but I learned a lot that area I'm now working on and I'm sure in direction and mainly sure what needs to be done on this way.

I work in an IT related industry too, but more the marketing side. Technology changes so fast it's a struggle to keep up.

I feel intimidated when applying for jobs. I have only ever worked for small cowboy companies who don't really care about proper procedures or quality, which frustrates me because I like things to be done efficiently and correctly, so I don't know how in the world I would fit into a professional organisation or what they would expect from me. It scares me a bit. I expect I'll get a new job and they'll be horrified by how little I actually know.

Expectations and practices may differ from country to country but I worked in all-european marketing company, in all-european retailer and in international airport - and almost everywhere vast majority of things was being done not correctly, not as it said in instructions, not as it should be. I found that even in huge companies lots of mistakes are normal. Furthermore, large companies can afford more mistakes than small ones so mainly you will have enough chances to succeed even if you fail several times. So if you have at least some abilities and desire to this job - you will succeed.

I was wondered how many mistakes and sometimes serious failures make senior emloyees who work in particular company for years. But they work and get promotions so even despite the fact big company may look more strictly organized you will always have there right to do things your way and to make mistakes without penalties. So don't worry and try!

THAT feeling I know all too well.
It's evidently called Imposter Syndrome: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impostor_syndrome

Thanks, but I am genuinely not very good at my job. I've just discovered one of the things I did for someone has been re-done and it looks 100 times better than the thing I did.